INTRODUCTION

In the dark hours before morning, at the crossing of the Yabbok, flowing
into the Jordan, Jacob struggled with a man whom he did not know; and
the stranger, upon seeing the sky beginning to redden in the east, asked
Jacob:

Let me go, for the day breaketh. Jacob, however, replied:
I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

The title of this book is taken from this story in Genesis (32:24-27).
The reader will find out at which juncture of our relations I exchanged
this ancient dialogue with Albert Einstein.

For long months we carried on a struggle by written and spoken word;
the subject of the struggle dealt with invisible but real forces, whether
they do or do not take part in the movements of the silent mechanism that
carries worlds on their paths. My claim of the participation of electromagnetic
fields and their interrelations in the structure of the universe was opposed
by him almost to the last, and this was the issue of the dispute.
The Morning Star was also a subject of our contention.

The main story starts in August 1952, though there were some exchanges
also earlier. We defined our positions, he in brief, I at length. Then,
after an interruption of over a year, we came to closer grips. In letters
(testimonials to the stands we took) in his marginal notes to manuscripts
of mine, and in discussions that went sometimes nearly till midnight,
we were not sparing of each other.

Before the debate started there certainly was in my opponent a preconceived
stand which he shared with so many men of science who could not see in
my published work any vrai- semblance of scientific truth. Yet as soon
as the contact became personal it grew in warmth, and a reciprocal affection
developed between us, unyielding as we were.

I believe it was not until our two long discussions accompanying the
reading of my paper On the Four Plans of the Universe less
than seven weeks before his death that my opponent fully comprehended
my stand. By that time he had also read Worlds in Collision for
another time, with a decidedly different reaction. At the end I felt as
if he wished me to be proven right.

Our debate ended on Friday, April 8, 1955, only nine days before Einsteins
death. I think I was the last person with whom he discussed a scientific
problem. On that day I brought him the published news that Jupiter sends
out radio noises; ten months earlier, in a letter to him, I had offered
to stake our dispute on this my claim of an as yet undiscovered phenomenon
 and at that time he let me have his reply in a marginal note to
my letter. It happened repeatedly that he wrote his arguments in the form
of notes, sometimes copious, on the margins of my letters, returning my
originals to me; with notes he also supplied some of my manuscripts that
he read: Earth in Upheaval, published half a year after his death,
and Stargazers and Gravediggers, memoirs on the origin and reception
of my work.

Over twenty years have passed since the figure that dominates this narrative
left the abode of men. With the passing years many phenomena have come
to light, and today it is sometimes difficult for a scientist to reconstruct
his own and his colleagues attitude of 1950 or 1955. And it is even
more difficult for the young generation to envisage the stand of science
in those years, almost a generation ago. Since then, many discoveries
of the Space Age have completely changed our understanding of the structure
of the solar system, and radioastronomy has brought home a new and exciting
picture of cosmic spaces and of the forces that act in them. It is easy
to be misled into thinking that this knowledge was already common in the
early fifties; thus whom better to quote than Einstein as a spokesman
for the prevalent scientific view of that time?

This short book is intended also as a personal tribute to a man who was
simple to the extreme, strong in convictions, humble in fame, curious
for human destiny, and very solitary.

If the years that have passed have not substantiated Einsteins
stand in the arguments we exchanged, his very attitude in this exchange
that much occupied his mind to the end of his life, and his effort to
uphold the human dignity of a heretic ostracized by the entire scientific
community, remains for me an unforgettable experience. I have tried to
communicate to my readers this glow that lives in me undiminished since
the dawn broke for me.

Many of the following pages were written when Einstein was still alive,
and now, in a number of instances, I have had to change the present tense
to the past tense. Other pages were written soon after his death, and
some I add while preparing the story for print. Being now several years
older than Einstein when he died, I think that I should not delay, but
put together and leave a record of our relations and of the issue that
divided us and bound us. I did not know intimately the man with whom I
struggled before the dawn, but I sensed something angelic. Before the
Day Breaks is a record and a tribute.